Punch-Drunk Love
by uselessenglishmajor
Summary: Hermione looked up, and her eyes went wide. The file almost slipped from her hands as her whole body froze. Healer training 101, you bloody idiot, she thought. Always check the name on the file first. HG/DM. EWE. One-shot.


"Please do me this favor. I'll owe you forever, I swear."

Hermione removed her arm from the sleeve of her coat and held out her hand. "What is it?"

"Broken hand in room three. It won't take long." Padma handed the file over. "Thank you! You're a lifesaver."

Aren't you supposed to be too, she didn't bother saying. It wasn't like there was much for her to go home to. And she liked her job; she lived it. To the point that Ron and Harry constantly complained about how little they saw her. It had been this way for the past two years, ever since she completed her residency. The healer program at St. Mungo's was one of the most prestigious and competitive in the entire Wizarding World. So of course she would have to give up her time, to dedicate herself. How else could she be the best?

Which is why she couldn't say no to Padma. And why Padma and all the other junior healers knew it.

Hermione hung up her coat, put back on her healer robes and returned to the floor of the Emergency Department. This was her home now. Her spartan apartment was simply where she slept and ate, at least when she remembered to. So what if it was Sunday and her shift ended over two hours ago. Sitting idle meant time to think and remember, and that absolutely would not do.

She stopped before Room 3 and knocked on the door, flipping through the file as she entered. "Hello, my name's Healer Granger. It says here you've hurt your left hand?" The triage notes stated bruising and soft tissue swelling, but she would need to cast an x-ray spell to ascertain if there were any fractures.

"Of course I'd get you," a male voice said.

Hermione looked up, and her eyes went wide. The file almost slipped from her hands as her whole body froze. Healer training 101, you bloody idiot, she thought. Always check the name on the file first.

So she did. It read: _MALFOY, Draco Lucius_. Padma apparently forgot her basic training too, unless she knew and didn't care. Why would it matter? Get it together, you fool!

"Is there a problem?"

Hermione looked up again. She blinked. "Why would there be?" Her old enemy from school, childhood bully and tormentor, witness to her torture in his ancestral home, boy who wished her and all her kind dead, wiped from existence. Why should she care that it was him of all people?

"I trust that you can keep this professional then?" he said then added quickly, "And confidential?"

"Of course."

She snapped the words defensively. How dare he. She would treat Voldemort himself and never speak a word if he should be her patient. That was the vow she took, the promise she made. It did not matter who sat before her, regardless of their past and whether or not they had changed.

And Draco Malfoy had changed. Physically at least. He sat on the edge of the bed, long legs dangling, body clad in a t-shirt, sweats and sneakers. The clothes shocked her first. Then the rest. She knew he had grown tall at school, often seeing his lanky frame skulk by her during eighth year at Hogwart's. But they never interacted, rarely spoke. He kept to himself, one of the few Slytherins to return and a pariah by then. Even first years would mock him. She kept to herself too. She didn't know what had happened after they'd graduated, only heard the rumors that he was ruined, that his mother had left the country following their trial while his father rotted away in Azkaban. He took the same number of N.E.W.T.s as her then disappeared entirely. And now he sat before her, no longer the rich and privileged pureblood boy she knew. He looked like a Muggle and he looked like a man. Hermione found the change unnerving.

"What happened?" she said, still standing far from the bed and with the file held open loosely in her hands.

"What happened?" he repeated, voice without intonation. He was staring directly at her, gray eyes piercingly cold. His hair was shorter than she remembered but hung messily across his brow, not slicked back with gel but clumped with grease and was that blood? There was a bruise along his right cheek and his lower lip was split. His shirt was torn; there were splatters of blood on that too. She saw how it clung to his broadened frame, rounded shoulders and the outline of defined pectorals as he slowly breathed. His arms were thickened with muscle as they rested by his sides; his legs looked strong beneath the loose black fabric of his sweatpants.

What happened to you?

"I got into a fight," he said.

"I can see that."

"You didn't see the other guy." And then he smiled, baring sharp white teeth. His top left incisor was chipped. She had no idea about his current skills with a wand, but she doubted that he needed one.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Were you fighting?"

"Boxing, Granger. For sport. It's a Muggle thing, isn't it?"

The word Muggle sounded perverse on his tongue. As perverse as the idea of Draco Malfoy scrapping with his bare hands and getting broken and bloodied. But that was how he appeared before her now.

"Is it only your hand that you injured?"

He shrugged and she noticed a slight wince to the movement. "My left hand got the worst of it." He lifted the said appendage up to show her. It was wrapped with white tape across the knuckles. "Southpaw," he explained.

"I never realized you were left-handed."

"Despite how much attention you paid?" Sarcasm dripped from his tongue but the venom it had once been laced with was gone.

"Take off your shirt," she said. "I'll need to examine all of you."

"Making up for lost time then?" But he made no more protests and surprisingly obeyed.

His torso was a marble sculpture, more defined than the contours of his t-shirt had hinted at. But the smooth pale marble was marred by patches of purple and yellow, bruises new and old.

"How often do you fight?" she said.

"As often as I can."

"Lie down."

He did. She came to a stop beside the bed, and he looked up at her. "Be gentle, won't you, Granger?"

Like you deserve it, she thought but held her tongue. "I'm going to cast a diagnostic spell to check for internal injuries."

"Do your worst."

She did her best, as always. The magic swirled from her wand across his body in a soft lilac. He closed his eyes, seemingly soothed by the sensation. Patches of pink glowed at the points of bruises, intensifying to orange and red at spots on his chest and his left hand.

"You have two cracked ribs," she said. "And a fractured fifth metacarpal."

"That all?" His eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at her guilelessly. "It's never felt like that before."

"What?"

"Nothing. So can you fix it?"

"Let me get some balm for your bruises and a dose of Skele-Gro. I'll need to make sure the bones are aligned as they heal."

He gave an infinitesimal nod, and she exited the room. In the potions closet, she set her hands on the counter and deflated. Her heart raced with the memory of his eyes, the way they had surveyed her with hate back at school, with horror and fear as she lay writhing in pain on his drawing room floor, with an unexpected kind of wonder as she had just examined him. There's pain in him too, she thought. Not just physical. He must fight to numb something, to forget. She understood in her way because her life spent working was how she kept her own memories at bay. But he brought them back and she felt battered too, punched in the gut by this unchartered common ground.

Get it together. You're a healer. You're in charge.

She gathered her supplies and returned. Malfoy lay as still as the dead. It was only the soft rise and fall of his beautiful chest that belied the notion. She stopped by the bedside and tentatively placed a hand on his right wrist. His eyes snapped open and he seemed to remember himself.

"Tired?" she said.

"I don't sleep well."

"Me either." She started to apply a healing balm to the bruises on his chest. His flesh was warm. She tried to remain detached but there was too much connection, too messy a shared past, too long since she had touched a man, had been touched herself. She was breaking every vow she took and for the last person she imagined it would be for, would ever want to.

Her thumb traced one of his many scars, linear and long. The _Sectumsempra_ curse. Snape's healing work. She wondered how she would have done if she had found him there, lying still and bleeding on the bathroom floor. Just a boy but already cursed, same as Harry. Forced to grow up too fast, to play with life and death when they weren't games, should never be.

I would save you, she thought. I would try to.

"Granger?"

She looked up at his face. He had placed his hand over hers, where it rested on his chest.

"The scars won't fade." He showed her another. The Dark Mark on the inside of his left forearm. It had leached to gray but the flesh was puckered and pink. "I tried. Then I tried to forget."

She pulled her hand free of his then pulled back her sleeve. "I can't forget," she told him, the raised letters of _Mudblood_ stark against her skin. "I wish I could."

"I should say sorry."

"Why don't you?"

"Would there be any point?"

She pulled her sleeve back down and shook her head. "No." It was the most honest moment she'd had with anyone since the war. Too many of her friends liked to pretend they had moved on but it couldn't be that easy, never was for her.

She gathered more balm on her fingertips and moved up to his face. His eyes never left hers as she worked, mapping the chiseled arch of his cheekbones, the plump meat of his lips. He looked like he wasn't used to such caresses, that no one had been gentle to him in a long time. Merlin but how she understood.

"Drink this," she said and handed him the vial of Skele-Gro. He knocked it back without comment, despite the bitter taste she knew most patients complained about. He did not move as it began to work, painfully regrowing his bones in the places they were broken. She worked with her wand to align his ribs and the metacarpal of his left hand, both saying nothing as her magic flowed, imbued with her usual determination. But there was warmth and something else too. She could feel the magic inside him, a great and ancient thing, a wary and wounded beast.

"Do you have a wand?" she said.

"No. I couldn't keep it. Part of the Ministry deal."

"Do you miss it?"

His right hand suddenly engulfed her wrist, fingers easily bridging the circumference. "Imagine if I took it away." She couldn't; it would feel like losing a limb. "And yet I feel it all the time. I can't miss it. It's always taunting me, Granger."

"Is that why you fight?"

"Is it why you heal?"

He let go of her and she stepped back from the bed. "There's nothing more I can do."

"You did enough. More than enough." He stood and reached for his t-shirt, sliding it over his head, and she watched as his body stretched, muscles tautened and relaxed. He towered over her but she didn't move away. "Thank you," he said.

"For what?"

"Doing your job, I guess."

He signed the forms she gave him and accepted the pot of balm to keep applying until everything was fully healed. Or until he was injured again. Would he come back? Did she want him to? How could she try to be his healer and feel as much as she did?

She saw the rest of the department stare as Draco Malfoy left the hospital. He would always be recognizable, thanks to his distinctive looks and his infamous name and all the history he dragged behind him like a cart with a broken wheel, something onerous and unwieldy. Tragic boy. Mysterious man. What was she going to do?

She tried to leave again, putting on her coat and making it as far as outside. It was raining now. It had been dry when she had tried to leave before. Dark already. She should apparate home but the walk called to her like a bath she could submerge herself in. She was soaked within seconds.

"What are you doing?" a now familiar voice said.

If she was soaked, Malfoy was drowned.

He was leaning against the hospital gates, hands in pockets, the thin layers of his clothes plastered to his frame.

"What are you doing?" she echoed back.

"Waiting for the Knight Bus."

"You don't have a wand."

"I don't?" He shrugged. "Thought I might be able to hail it the Muggle way."

"Where do you even live?"

He shrugged again.

"Malfoy?"

"Go home, Granger. Before you catch cold."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You can't just wait here for something that might never come."

"How profound."

She was going to regret this. "You can stay with me."

"Is that a proposition?"

"I'm trying to be nice. Call it an act of a charity for a pathetic stranger."

"I don't want your charity, witch."

"Then what do you want?"

He took a step towards her, eyes scanning her up and down like she was dinner, the prized prey of a hunt, something he could kill and devour.

"Things I shouldn't," he whispered.

"Why did you come here?"

"I was hurt. It was warm."

"Are you homeless?"

"Nomadic."

"Fuck."

He had gotten closer still. She could see drops of rain trail down his throat and gather in the crevice between his collarbones. She could see his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. His injured hand raised and hovered beside her head.

"You look as lost as me too," he said.

"I have somewhere to go."

"Then why are you still here?" His fingers brushed away strands of wet hair than clung to her face. "What happened to you?"

"The war happened, Draco."

He grabbed a clump of curls and hissed. "Say that again."

"Say what?"

"My name, Hermione."

But his mouth was crushed to hers before she could speak again, smothering the word, drawing all the breath from her lungs, all the thoughts from her brain. He was kissing her and he never asked her first. He had pulled her hair and just taken and she should protest; she should be appalled. A part of her was, the girl that had called him a foul, loathsome, evil, little cockroach and punched him in the face. But the rest of her couldn't move, was rendered immobile as she thought, why are _you_ kissing me?

"I'm sorry. Shit."

His forehead was pressed to hers and his eyes was scrunched closed and the rain was running down their faces like tears. His fingers stayed threaded through her hair and his breath came hard and fast against her.

"Why are you sorry?" she said.

"I shouldn't have—"

"But you did." Her hand came up between them and she stroked the flesh of his lips again. "It's okay."

"No, it's not. It really isn't." He might have been crying. She couldn't be sure given the weather, but there was a wretched catch in his voice. "I'm sorry, you know. For what I did. Not just kissing you but all of it. I know sorry can't make up for anything. There's no point, like you said. But I don't want to feel like this. I just want to feel better."

"Me too."

"Well, you're the healer."

"Shut up, Draco." And she kissed him this time like a smack to the mouth, poured out all the rage and the hurt and let him take it. Shut up, she thought. Shut up, shut up. Say nothing more. Don't think again. Make me forget. Make me better. I cannot heal myself. I'm so fucked up. I'm lost and homeless like you.

They didn't break apart as she apparated them into her apartment. She wouldn't let him, even as he stumbled with the shock; she stayed trembling in his arms.

"You're freezing," he murmured. "Take off your clothes." He removed her coat for her. "I need to examine all of you."

She laughed as she unbuttoned her shirt and he knelt at her feet, removing her shoes and unzipping her skirt to slide it down her hips.

"Tell me where it hurts," he said, and he kissed her bare stomach, fingers tracing from her arms to her breasts as she pulled on his hair. "Here?" His mouth moved over her underwear.

"Oh god."

"Tell me."

"There. Please there."

His mouth and his tongue did unspeakable things first through the lace and then—after he tore it away— against her. She wondered how she smelled and how she tasted and then she stopped thinking altogether. It was like falling, like being drunk and high and caught in a good dream where the details were forgotten but you woke with the best feeling, safe and happy and deliriously rested. Falling. Yes she was. She disintegrated against him, something shattering inside her, the fragments spilling down like the rain.

When she knew where she was, regenerated back to whole, he was laying her down on her bed, stretched in the dark, his hands moving all over her, studying, learning, his mouth following the path his fingers had taken.

"How did you get this scar?"

He had stopped between her breasts, caught by a jagged mark. She blinked as she tried to concentrate and recall. "Battle at the Ministry," she said.

"Was it…?"

"Dolohov."

She could feel him exhale against her at the revelation: it was not his father. "You don't need a wand to hurt people," he said.

What did that mean?

"I made sure…"

"What did you do?"

"I was so angry." His head was pillowed against her now, his strong body a heavy blanket, still clothed and damp from the rain. "After the war, when I finished school, I didn't know what else to do. I got drunk in a pub in London and got into a fight. Some Muggles beat me up to within an inch of my life. I had no wand, no means to defend myself. It was the landlord who saved me and took me to a hospital. Turned out he used to be a boxer. I started going to his old gym, practically lived there for a while, and he trained me from nothing. I learned other things too. Illegal fights can end messy. I got good with a knife. I got bored. I kept reading how the Ministry was still trying to find the remaining Death Eaters. I knew things they didn't, used all my contacts and money."

"That was you?"

There had been a time when a number of notorious former Death Eaters started showing up dead. Hermione had treated one, a barely alive or recognizable Thorlin Rowle brought into St. Mungo's, but there was nothing she could do. Harry had been involved in the investigation, but they were never able to find a suspect since no trace of magic had been used. And partly because there was little motivation within the Ministry to. Whoever was behind the killings was doing the work for them. It had always sat uneasily with Harry (not so much with Ron), but then things had quietened down once again. That was over two years ago.

"After my mother's trial, she started receiving threats. Father couldn't protect her from jail; I had to. That's why she moved to France and I sold the Manor. Over half our other assets had been taken for reparations. No one cared or knew what I did. It didn't matter. I became invisible."

"Hardly."

"What about you?"

"I sort of disappeared too. Into my work."

"You're far from invisible."

"I exist but it's like no one really sees me. Until you."

His head lifted so he could study her. "You saw me too."

"Yes."

"Now you know, does it frighten you? I can go—"

"No. I'm not afraid." She pulled at the edge of his t-shirt. "I want to see all of you."

She watched him strip in the moonlight, a marble sculpture brought to life, real and palpably dangerous. His killer hands thrilled her. What could they do? Why was she sick to feel so good in their hold, to imagine them slaying all her monsters?

He rejoined her on the bed and they kissed and explored and found all the sore parts, the still healing places. They kissed and touched them better as best they could, and he positioned himself above her, pressed between her thighs as her ankles crossed behind his back and drew him inside her.

"Did you kill Dolohov?" she whispered as she held him close.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I slit his throat."

She moaned as he moved and twisted. "Feels so good."

"I'd kill for you, Hermione."

"You already did."

"Should have made it slow. Drawn it out."

"Ah!"

"Made him hurt as much as he hurt you."

She pulled his mouth back to hers and kissed him until she couldn't breathe and she was coming beneath him, dissolving against the sheets while she cried his name over and over.

"It shouldn't feel like this," he said, wrapped around her, dry and warm and the safest place she had ever known.

"Like what?"

"Good. I feel good."

"Me too."

"I felt it when you cast the diagnostic spell. Your goodness. You're so good." He hugged her closer. "You were born to be a healer, Hermione."

"And what about you?"

"I'm good at hurting people."

"You protect the people you love. That's pretty noble."

"Fucking Gryffindor."

"If you loved me, what would you do?"

"Don't ask. It would horrify you."

It would turn me on, she thought and snuggled closer against him. "For someone I loved, I'd do unspeakable things too."


End file.
